Guest post: Don’t ignore the cronyism
Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Vacations for all.
The thing I think a lot of people miss, is if you look at Project 2025, the whole plan is for a crony government.
Sure we can argue about the social justice aspect of all of this, but we aren’t arguing between a merit based system and a DEI one.
We’re talking about Donald “Put his idiot son-in-law in charge of handling a pandemic” Trump here. Donald “Wants a drunken misogynist to run the military” Trump. Donald “Putting an antivax brain worm infested roadkill bear eater in change of health” Trump.
The only merit Trump appears to care about is loyalty to Trump.
What Trump is doing is eliminating the checks and balances that could get in the way of him stealing. Sure, it may mean that the best person isn’t getting the job, I honestly don’t know, but it is likely also getting in the way of Trump picking some of the worst.
This is a point I keep returning to. Trump’s appointments, his expressed admiration for other kleptocrats like Viktor Orban, his determination to capture or destroy any institution that might otherwise serve as a counterweight to his ambitions, the way he used his first precidency to funnel money to his private businesses, all goes to show that you can’t be pro meritocracy and pro Trump at the same time.
And, as I have previously pointed out, this is where attempts to portray Trumpism as simply the logical consequence of what ”conservatives” have been up to the whole time fail. Trump is no more a ”conservative” than TRAs are ”liberals”. The betrayal of the idea of ”meritocracy” in favor of a system that rewards personal loyalty to the leader over accomplishment is probably more offensive to traditional conservatives than to leftists who think there’s no such thing as ”meritocracy” anyway, only unearned privilege perpetuating itself from one generation to the next.
There’s a big difference between Trump Version 1 and Trump Version 2.
First time round, no-one expected him to win. He had no plan, he was out of his depth, he didn’t know what to do. He had no team around him (beyond a handful of loyalists). Most Republicans were suspicious of him. The media and national mood were against him. And the entire government machine just stonewalled most of what he attempted to do.
This time round a lot of sensible, capable people have formed a team around him, and have thought through their plans. While Trump himself is still an incompetent buffoon (and while he may reject sensible advice and may end up falling out with that team), there are some good EOs coming out. And, this time round, the zeitgeist on many issues has changed and the winds are now in his favour.
One example of that “capable team” is the superb and spot-on EO rejecting gender ideology written by May Mailman. The anti-DEI EOs also seem to have capable people behind them. And yes, it is a return to merit-based policies instead of identity-based policies. Killing woke DEI and returning to MLK-style judgement-on-merit really is good and necessary.
I expect there will many bad things about the Trump presidency, but it looks as though there could also be a lot of good things. Sorry** if that assessment is too centrist for some folks here.
**No, actually, I’m not.
Or there will be one good thing about the current administration and a shitload of bad things. Watch him telling Hannity how trivial the crimes of the Capitol mob were, watch him say they were there to “protest the vote.” Watch the guy who brazenly defends an attempted coup that would have installed him in office as a dictator.
Sensible, capable people like Pete Hesgeth? Or RFK Jr? Or Dr. Oz? Or Scott Bessent? Or Pam Bondi? Or Kash Patel? Or Tulsi Gabbard?
Sensible and capable, all, I’m sure.
Version 2 is WORSE. He can’t run again so he doesn’t have that constraint. He feels free to do any criminal evil vindictive thing he wants. Decent conservatives won’t go near him.
The gender executive order isn’t “one example” of how awesome he’ll be, it’s the ONLY example of a benefit from his dangerous return to power.
Trump himself is still an incompetent buffoon, yes, but he’s also an angry stupid obstinate entitled sadistic shit. He’s a bad bad man, as he makes obvious every time he opens his mouth and lets words fall out. No it does not look as if there could also be a lot of good things, and it’s not remotely “centrist” to pretend Trump is a normal or decent human being.
Sensible, capable people like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller.
Trump hits NIH with ‘devastating’ freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring
Much more at the link. What “sensible, capable” person came up with that idea?
Jeezus.
One thing about merit-based hiring (I am a big believer in merit-based hiring, but I am not delusional): it depends heavily on having a standard for ‘merit’ in place. Right now the government (the elected portion) does not have that, and can appoint any ridiculous appointment they wish.
For a different example, academics has a defined standard in place. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that standard is always right, or that the right person is always hired. Once you meet the standard in terms of education and experience, there is a lot of wiggle room. But at least there is a starting point of minimum qualifications (more stringent in some ways for college than for K-12, since in college, you have to have at least eighteen hours of graduate level classes in the subject you are teaching). If the standard isn’t working, it can be modified, even though the process may be slow.
Trump also believes in merit based hiring – he just has a different definition of merit, and he’s sticking to it like glue. His definition of merit is ‘supports Donald Trump. Agrees with whatever Donald Trump says. Will admire, possibly even adore, Donald Trump (though I suspect some of them don’t, but are letting on that they do).
That isn’t merit. As for what really constitutes merit in government, we need to reach agreement on what that means before we can establish a standard. The most recent election shows in sharp colors just how unlikely that is.
Yes Coel and Trans women are Women, you can tell because all women are six feet tall with five o’clock shadow. You are the single most dishonest human being I’ve encountered in my daily life since I cut ties with an idiot who was pretending that you can’t tell sex based on pelvis shape four years ago.
Lie to our faces some more please or if that’s insufficient continue to lie to yourself.
@Blood Knight in Sour Armor:
Give me one example of me posting something dishonest.
(You do know what the concept of “dishonesty” entails, right? You do know that it does not mean “has opinion different from mine”, right?)
Your comment @ 2 is at least evasive and misleading. You say “there are some good EOs coming out” and yet the only one you specify is the one I have already written extensively about. What are these plural good EOs? Why didn’t you specify one I haven’t already written about? It gives the impression that you’re bluffing.
This will be my last and final comment on anything Coel related – The road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting.
@Ophelia:
I explicitly mentioned the “superb and spot-on EO rejecting gender ideology” and also “The anti-DEI EOs” (there have been three). That adds up to more than one. I really don’t see how that’s in any way “evasive”. (Does “Killing woke DEI and returning to MLK-style judgement-on-merit really is good and necessary” really sound evasive?)
But explicitly, EOs so far that I think are good (though I’ve not looked at all of them) are:
“Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” (rescinding support and funding for groups that label stuff as “misinformation” and “disinformation” to try to censor it).
“Establishing And Implementing The President’s “Department Of Government Efficiency” (well I would, wouldn’t I?)
“Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” (I presume you agree)
“Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” (1st anti-DEI)
“Reforming The Federal Hiring Process And Restoring Merit To Government Service” (2nd anti-DEI)
“Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” (3rd anti-DEI)
This one is also likely sensible, pending further thought:
“Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” (removing restaint on AI that is likely premature).
That makes seven, which is plural. But, the ones I was mainly thinking of in the comment #2 were the anti-gender and anti-DEI ones explicitly mentioned.
Yes I know you said the gender one, that’s what I said. You don’t have to repeat everything back to me every time. Ok I guess “The anti-DEI EOs” count – I missed the mention of them, perhaps because you didn’t go into detail the way you did about the one I have already extensively yammered about.
I don’t think there is anything good about “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” (1st anti-DEI) for one. I’m sure many of us have brushed up against modern DEI training or proposals and rolled our eyes and grumbled. As a 60 year old white man I certainly have. That doesn’t mean there are not very good reasons to include people who are not like you in decision making and organisational structures. It also doesn’t mean there is no case for affirmative action in some respects. -despite Coel having frequently told us there is not.
This first order revokes Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965 (Equal Employment Opportunity). If your beef is with DEI, there is no need to revoke this order which pre-dates DEI by decades. This order was the main lever the President of the time had to compel the US Government to live up to the requirements of civil rights legislation. It prevented managers and officials in the government from being discriminatory in employment and issuing contracts – remembering that the US was indisputably openly racist at the time.
I don’t have a problem with merit based hiring, but in my experience unless organisations reform their internal culture (nearly always because of external pressure), merit tends to look a lot like employing people who are like you. Just as most people tend to naturally hang out with people who are much like them.
I have a lot of beef with the issue of ending government waste. There are places where government waste needs to be ended, that is sure. Those are NEVER touched. The major wasters in the government are military (which is political suicide to cut, though smaller increases are always called cuts by the opposing party), and pork barrel projects. Good luck getting congress people to end those; bye-bye job.
In reality, the government actually is efficient, and accurate, in much of what they do. People don’t know that, and refuse to believe it, because all campaigns against the government have paid off in people thinking the government never does anything right. I once had a sort-of argument with Benjamin Radford (remember him?) because he claimed that 1 million errors found in Social Security entries proved how sloppy the government is. I told him that is like nothing in errors; there are more than 400 MILLION social security numbers that have been issued, and every one of those accounts has more than one entry (or at least most of them do; there may be some that are nothing more than a name, I suppose). I leave you to do the calculation – 1/435 is one place to start with it.
In working for both government and private industries, I have never seen in government the amount of waste that I saw in private. Also, we had a requirement of 95% accuracy, and achieved 99% accuracy EVERY MONTH – except those months, which were more frequent than the 99% accuracy, where we achieved 100%. I never had a private job with that kind of accuracy. And my last private job took pride in having a 50% success rate, but that was very misleading. Since they only completed about 1% of the cases, they were successful in 50% of 1%. Again, I’ll let you do the math.
So, when the Trump administration starts cutting, where are they cutting? Are they cutting the Pentagon, making them buy their hammers at WalMart for a decent price? Are they cutting the pork barrel? Are they cutting the grants and subsidies that reward wealthy corporations with more wealth? Or are they cutting things that are highly efficient and effective, and help the ordinary citizens of this country a little bit? We have almost no social safety net; by the time Musk and Trump are done, we will probably have none.
Meanwhile, they are awarding billions to Truth Social to work on AI (sleazy enough)? I imagine at least part of that work is going to be done by Musk’s companies – if it’s done at all, since a lot of money that goes to Donald’s companies, government money or individual donors doesn’t matter – will end up in Donald’s bank account.
Hear hear, iknklast. Like you I’ve worked for both government (research organisations) and a number of private companies. “ve heard stories of terrible wastage in government (notably Government operated trading companies), but those all date back 40-50 years now and were isolated to things like the Railways. I’ve observed waste and misspending on a grand scale in private enterprise on the other hand. Sure, not all private enterprise, but in all honesty if someone asked me how to deliver a service in the most cost-effective and accurate manner possible, I’d opt for a government service with good culture and hi morale over a private company with good culture and high morale. Any day.
As for the freeze on everything at NIH…
Am I the only person to find Coel’s claim that his position is ‘centrist’ risible?
@Ophelia:
I was pretty much treating this thread as a continuation of the “vacations” thread, which was all about those anti-DEI EOs, hence I didn’t expound because I assumed readers would have read that one. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
@Rob:
See my comments #4 and #5 on the “vacations for all” thread for why the Republicans rescinded EO 11246. (See also the Coleman Hughes piece linked to in that thread.)
The issue is the “affirmative action” language in that EO, a concept that has undergone “mission creep” and been expanded by judicial activism since it was originally written. Whatever the original intent, it is now being interpreted as requiring equal outcomes, not just equal opportunities.
As best I can make out (though I may be misjudging) the Republicans are not against equal opportunies and equal treatement of every individual on their merits.
What they are against is the concept that a court can point to unequal outcomes and declare “that’s a prima facie case that you are discriminating, the burden of proof is now on you to prove that you’re not” (a burden that, in practice, is near impossible to meet, even if what they’re doing is entirely reasonable).
For a scholarly, book-length account of what that leads to, see Heather Mac Donald’s ” When Race Trumps Merit How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives”.
@Tim Harris:
Well, let’s discuss how one could define “centrist”.
It does not mean “the median opinion typically expressed in the socially-constructed reality of my actively policed Bluesky bubble”.
Instead, I am taking it to mean “median opinion typically held among the population at large”.
In the US recently 77,000,000 people voted for Trump as President, while 75,000,000 voted against him. Someone who sees both good and bad in Trump’s presidency is indeed pretty centrist.
“Literally Hitler” and “threat to democracy” are the Bluesky-bubble opinions, not the centrist opinions.
In the UK, polls currently have Reform 25%, Tories 25%, Labour 24% and LibDems 12%. Again, I’m pretty much in line with median sentiment.
Yes, Tim, I’m a centrist. If you don’t recognise that then it is your compass that is askew.
And, as I’ve said, about 7 or 8 million centrist-minded voters who had previously voted Democrat decided not to this time. They are moderate, centrist folks who are OK with Trump but whom you need to attract back into your camp if you care about winning next time. Tim, do you realise how repellent you are to such people? Do you?
If you had any clue, you’d realise that I’m doing you a favour telling you the things I write on this blog! You (Democrats) need to win over people like me, moderate centrists who (were I American) would have readily voted for Obama but would not have voted for Kamala Harris. If you don’t realise that then enjoy your eight years of Vance! You’ll be more upset about that than I will.
I am not American and I am not a member of the Democratic Party. You are not in fact doing anybody any favours, Coel. You have a peculiarly exalted and wholly unwarranted view of yourself and your abilities and powers. You, a ‘moderate centrist’ – the claim would make a cat laugh. I note that you have only very recently come up with this ‘persona’ or mask; you are a veritable shape-shifter. Given the context (a word you are fond of when trying to defend the indefensible where Musk is concerned) that you have provided over the years in your comments, I see no reason to trust anything you say or whatever persona you try to lay claim to. You and your tactics are all too transparent
The last (American, presidential) election took place in wholly different circumstances from those of the two elections in which Obama was elected, and rabid & racist talk about a ‘mediocre DEI hire’ (your words, in case you have forgotten) does not change that fact. I do not think you are in any position to talk about mediocrity in others. Among many other factors, there had not, in the Obama days, been the total debasement of Twitter by Elon Musk; his willingness to encourage dangerous lies to spread unchecked on the platform; his personal amplification of those lies; not to mention his cynical cosying up to Trump for his own selfish ends, and his provision of huge amounts of money to the Trump campaign. Those are things – and they include the corrupt influence of big money on, in particular, American politics – I find repellent, Coel. I also find repellent mediocrities who readily trot out right-wing tropes about ‘mediocre DEI hires’ that they have picked up on right-wing fever pits on the internet. If repellent mediocrities or Trump voters find me repellent, I do not care at all – your little rhetorical tricks are infantile..
I have asked you this question more than once before and you have avoided answering it: Are you in agreementt with Musk’s vociferous support for the right-wing thug ’Tommy Robinson’ (another persona), or are you not? And I shall add another question: are you in agreement with Musk’s characterisation of Jess Philips as ‘a rape genocide apologist’, or are you not?
I should be grateful if you would have the honour and integrity to answer these questions. But I doubt that you will.
Even the Anti-DefamationLeague has had enough of Musk:
@elonmusk
Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!
Some people will Goebbels anything down!
Stop Gőring your enemies!
His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler!
Bet you did nazi that coming
***
Jonathen Greenblatt of the ADL:
We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it.
@elonmusk
, the Holocaust is not a joke.
If anyone wants to complain about ‘DEI hires’, they might start by looking at Trump’s cabinet picks,
@Tim:
This exemplifies a lot of what’s wrong with too many on the left these days. They just cannot fathom the concept of a good-faith disagreement. They’ve never talked to anyone outside of their bubble and don’t know how to do it. If someone has a different opinion then they must simply be a hateful person, and if anything they say sounds in any way reasonable, then it must be merely a mask.
Hence (to give an example):
Sensible person: “I do think that biological sex is important, and it does matter that “trans women” are actually male”.
Left: “You hateful bigot! You want all trans children dead, don’t you?”
This is you Tim (though not on that exact topic, it’s picked so that you might at least see the point).
One just cannot have sensible discussions like this.
And if, Tim, I don’t respond to any and everything you say to me, it is partly because one has to pick and choose what to respond to (else one would over-post, which I likely do anyhow), and partly because you are openly saying that you do not want a good-faith discussion with me, you routinely just insult and sneer rather than attempting rebuttals, so why would I feel any obligation to engage with you?
Tim, you are very welcome to — as you have indeed said that you would do several times — simply ignore me. I usually don’t respond to you unless you directly attack me. How about the same from you? Wouldn’t that make the blog better?
I see the US Department of Navy has cancelled its anti-harassment policy, alongside their DEI policies. I’m sure Coel will be able to tell us why that’s actually a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Simply the phrase, “moderate, centrist” is an obfuscation. (BTW, Coel, since you like to cite MLK when it suits you, care to remind the class of his opinion of white moderates?)
Oh, and for the record, I’ve already shown that the whole point of the gender policy EO was to smuggle fetal personhood into federal policy, something we know is entirely about abortion and nothing to do with gender (in fact, they were so eager to get fetal personhood in there that they actually screwed up the language, and essentially declared that all men are actually transmen, and should be treated as women).
Stanley Fish, in one of his good books on ‘free speech’, remarks on the way many people who are far from being ‘moderate centrists’ will piously and hypocritically recite Martin Luther King’s words “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”, while ignoring everything else that is said in the speech as well as in other speeches of King’s.
@Freemage:
I am indeed quite happy to remind the class!
In a situation where there were very real and blatant injustices that needed fixing, MLK rightly criticised those white “moderates”** who just dithered or advised a very slow rate of change.
I’ll also take the opportunity to remind the class that I have multiple times stated that American blacks did indeed suffer dire injustices up to about 1965, but that things began to be roughly ok from about 1980, and that as regards people born in the 2000s, those blacks have been treated pretty fairly by society and are not subject to systemic injustices.
There seems to be an underlying assumption by some that, if things were once bad, then necessarily they remain bad. This ain’t so.
(**Being a “moderate” doesn’t mean always splitting the difference on any issue or not caring about anything, that’s a strawman, it’s a label applied in response to a given topic.)
Interesting phrasing. You make a contentious interpretation of the EO, then declare that you’ve “shown” your interpretation to be true.
@Rob:
I note your cynical phrasing.
I’ve never said that I support all of what Trump is doing or will do, I’ve explicitly said that I will likely regard much of it as bad.
I note that you give no link.
On a quick Goggle I couldn’t find anything on this.
Whether rescinding an “anti-harrassment” policy is a good thing would depend quite a lot on what it said. For example, if it said “refusal to refer to someone with preferred pronouns constitutes harassment”, then I could indeed explain to you why rescinding it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
How lucky for Coel that the time when there were “very real and blatant injustices that needed fixing” ended so crisply and decisively so long ago, freeing him to harangue the rest of us about how over over over that whole thing is and how desperately we need his detailed and interminable views on the subject.